Here’s the good news: we’ve improved the environment before, and we can do it again

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Since the instrument was signed, the production and use of ozone-depleting chemicals has fallen globally by 98 per cent.

Karoly says the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer – the first universally ratified instrument in United Nations history – is clear evidence that humankind can turn problems around with science, goodwill and hard work.

“It is clear that the international action under the Montreal Protocol to limit the emissions of ozone-depleting substances was a massive and difficult sort of treaty to get agreed, but it was agreed,” Karoly said.

“It has worked ... the depletion of stratospheric ozone not only has slowed, but there are strong indications that globally, ozone depletion has stopped.”

In 2015, the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency estimated the protocol had saved the lives of 1.5 million Americans alone since it came into effect in 1989.

“Forty years ago, nations came together to take the first step in protecting the ozone layer — guided by science, united in action,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week.

“Today, the ozone layer is healing. This achievement reminds us that when nations heed the warnings of science, progress is possible.”

DDT

A Department of Agriculture officer with poisonous chemicals.

The discovery of the insecticidal qualities of DDT had earned Swiss chemist Dr Paul Mueller a Nobel Prize in 1948, and it was soon used in orchards and gardens around Australia and – to varying degrees – overseas in the post-war period.

DDT worked by inhibiting the enzymes in some insects, killing them. Its application was particularly valuable in eradicating malaria-carrying mosquitos and typhus-carrying lice.

Appearing on ABC radio in 1997, author Gloria Frydman described how chemicals that had been used during World War II, including DDT, were imported into Australia with wide application.

“The new postwar immigrants to Australia were freely doused in DDT,” Frydman recounted. “The fruit of market garden apple orchards were liberally sprayed with DDT. Vegetable crops were sprayed with other chemicals from the family of organochlorines as dieldrin, now prohibited.”

But as Rachel Carson’s seminal 1962 book Silent Spring documented, DDT was not just deadly to mosquitos and lice, but had been linked to tumours in animals in test labs. While she didn’t call for an outright ban on the poison, Carson’s work highlighted the damaging effects pesticides could have on the broader environment, particularly by creating resistance to pesticides in insects.

The United States government banned the use of DDT in 1972, followed by Australia in 1987. The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants bans the use of DDT worldwide, which can be used only when no effective and efficient alternatives of curbing malaria outbreaks are available.

The Franklin River

The 1982 blockade by peaceful protesters – including Bob Brown, who would go on to help form the Australian Greens – was perhaps the most successful environmental campaign in Australian history.

The protest became known as the Franklin River blockade, but it was much more than that. Under the initial proposal, the Southern Hemisphere’s largest rock fill dam was to be built 100 metres high on the Gordon River. Near the confluence with the Franklin River, two more dams were planned, under Tasmanian Hydro-Electric Commission’s plans to use the wild rivers to produce electricity.

As this masthead reported 20 years later, 1272 people were arrested during the blockade, most for trespassing on Hydro land at the river, or on roadworks. Not one arrest was for a crime involving violence.

The blockade ran into the 1983 federal election campaign, where it became a vital component of Labor’s campaign, and victory. That victory was reinforced when, later that year, the High Court approved Commonwealth powers to halt the dam by a vote of 4-3.

Save the whales (and other species)

Humpback whales have staged a miraculous recovery since the 1970s.

Anyone growing up in the 1980s would recall the proliferation of bumper stickers and t-shirts calling on governments to protect whales – particularly humpback whales, which had fallen to critically low levels.

The Fraser government banned whaling in Australian waters in 1979 (although the killing of humpback whales in Australian waters ended in 1963), and Australia became a world leader in advocating for protection of whale species in the Southern Ocean and beyond.

An International Whaling Commission moratorium on whale hunting came into effect in 1986 (although some countries still hunt whales – notably Japan and Norway), and many species have recovered.

Humpback whales, which had been hunted down to a few hundred surviving animals, now number in their tens of thousands.

It’s not just humpback whales that have recovered with the help of protections: giant pandas, grey wolves, and American alligators are among the species to have been brought back from the brink of extinction with concerted action.

Climate change?

While it may seem counterintuitive after the dark warnings of the National Climate Risk Assessment, there is cause for hope here, too.

Britain closed its last coalmine in 2024, becoming the first major economy to exit from coal. In the same year, more than 40 per cent of electricity used around the globe was powered by renewables for the first time.

In May, it was revealed China’s greenhouse gas emissions may have peaked, with the superpower’s emissions down 1.6 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 – well ahead of the goal to reverse the growth in emissions by 2030.

It was a particularly striking achievement considering it came as China’s energy demand increased.

And while climate scientists caution we need to go further, the action already taken by countries that have signed up to the Paris Agreement have contributed to the projected temperature increases by the end of the century being reduced from 3.7–4.8°C to 2.4–2.6°C.

It’s a point Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was keen to reinforce last week, when he announced Australia would pursue a 62-70 per cent emissions reduction target for 2035. Albanese said the goal was achievable, in part thanks to Australia’s “superpower”: her people.

“Our people are acting,” he said. “We have seen that with the take-up, which has exceeded most people’s expectations, of batteries in order to store energy that has been produced on Australian rooftops through solar.

“This shows the significant amount of progress which has been made ... around 1000 [batteries] every weekday are being installed around the country.”

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